영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Economists have long debated whether prosperity and environmental quality are fundamentally opposed, or whether the relationship between them ①changes shape as an economy matures. The Environmental Kuznets Curve, a hypothesis ②borrowed from earlier theories of income inequality, proposes that pollution initially rises alongside economic growth before eventually declining once a society crosses a certain threshold of wealth. In its early stages, industrializing nations prioritize output over conservation, ③treats clean air and water as expendable costs of development to be addressed later. Beyond a certain point, however, rising incomes generate both the technological capacity and the political will ④to demand stricter regulation, so degradation begins to reverse even as production keeps expanding. Some scholars regard this trajectory as a reassuring paradox, suggesting that the very growth ⑤blamed for ecological harm may eventually finance its own repair. Critics, by contrast, argue that the curve rests on a narrow selection of pollutants that happen to decline with wealth, while ignoring greenhouse gases and resource depletion, which show no comparable tendency to fall.

As efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions intensify, industries unable to eliminate carbon dioxide from their processes have turned to a technology ①known as carbon capture and storage. This technology involves ②separating carbon dioxide from the exhaust of power plants before it is released into the atmosphere, then transporting the captured gas for underground injection. Once injected into porous rock formations, the gas is trapped beneath layers of impermeable rock that ③prevents it from escaping into the air. Proponents argue that carbon capture and storage functions as a bridge technology, allowing heavy industries to keep operating while more sustainable alternatives are developed. For instance, cement and steel production, both of which ④release carbon dioxide as an unavoidable byproduct of chemical reactions, are considered prime candidates for this approach. However, critics contend that the technology remains prohibitively expensive and that building pipelines requires investments few companies make voluntarily. Despite such concerns, many governments continue ⑤funding pilot projects, convinced that this technology will play an indispensable role in reaching emission targets.

When anthropologists first began systematically studying societies far removed from their own, many unconsciously judged unfamiliar customs against the standards of their home culture, a tendency now known as ethnocentrism. Cultural relativism emerged as a ①disruptive principle, holding that a society's practices should be understood within their own cultural context rather than measured against an outside standard presumed to be universal. Anthropologist Franz Boas argued that no culture possesses an inherently ②superior set of values, and that apparent oddities, once examined closely, typically serve ③coherent functions within their own social systems. Cultural relativism transformed fields ranging from anthropology to international development, encouraging researchers to ④suspend quick judgment and seek local meaning before drawing conclusions. Critics caution, however, that taken to an extreme, the principle risks excusing practices that cause ⑤genuine harm.

Labeling theory approaches deviance not as a ①fixed property of certain acts, but as a social process created when powerful groups attach a negative label to a person's behavior. According to this view, nearly everyone breaks minor rules at some point, yet only some individuals are ②singled out, caught, and formally branded as delinquents, criminals, or troublemakers. Sociologist Howard Becker argued that this label often becomes what he called a master status, a single identity that ③overshadows every other trait a person has. Once labeled, an individual may find legitimate opportunities ④expanding, pushing them toward the very community of offenders that the label predicted they would join. This process, sometimes called secondary deviance, illustrates how social reaction can produce the outcome it claims merely to describe, a pattern critics see as deeply ⑤troubling.

Cities are frequently several degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside, a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect, which intensifies in summer and threatens public health. This disparity arises largely because asphalt and concrete absorb solar radiation during the day and slowly release it as heat throughout the night, preventing urban areas from cooling down. Furthermore, the scarcity of vegetation in densely built areas removes a natural cooling mechanism, since plants lower temperatures by evaporating water from their leaves. To address this problem, urban planners _______________. One widely used solution involves reflective "cool" roofing engineered to reflect more sunlight than dark rooftops absorb. Another strategy, green infrastructure, incorporates rooftop gardens and tree-lined streets that provide shade while releasing moisture. In contrast, some cities have pursued permeable pavements that let water seep through and evaporate, cooling nearby surfaces. Collectively, these strategies show that reducing urban heat depends on combining approaches suited to a city's geography.

Émile Durkheim insisted that sociology could become a genuine science only if it identified a distinct subject matter that could not be reduced to individual psychology. He termed this subject matter social facts, defined as ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that exist outside any single individual yet exert a coercive influence over that individual's behavior. Language, currency, legal codes, and religious ritual all qualify as social facts, since a person is born into these systems already fully formed and must conform to them regardless of personal preference. Durkheim insisted that social facts should be studied as things, meaning they must be examined empirically through observable patterns such as statistics, rather than _______________.

Structural functionalism approaches society as a complex system of interdependent parts, each contributing to the overall stability and smooth operation of the whole, much as organs contribute to the survival of a biological body. Sociologist Talcott Parsons argued that institutions such as the family, education, religion, and government each perform necessary functions, so that removing or weakening any one institution threatens the equilibrium of the entire system. Robert Merton refined this framework by distinguishing manifest functions, the intended and openly recognized consequences of a social practice, from latent functions, unintended consequences that nonetheless help sustain the system, such as schools serving not only to educate but also to provide childcare that allows parents to work. Critics have long charged that functionalism, by emphasizing stability and equilibrium, struggles to explain social conflict and rapid change, since it tends to _______________.

Rewilding, a conservation strategy that seeks to restore natural processes with minimal human interference, has gained attention as traditional conservation struggles to halt biodiversity loss. (A) Compensation programs reimbursing farmers for livestock losses, alongside ecotourism initiatives creating local income, have proven essential to sustaining public support. Ultimately, rewilding succeeds not by removing human influence but by renegotiating the relationship between people and the wild species they must coexist with. (B) Rather than managing landscapes according to a fixed blueprint, rewilding projects often reintroduce key species, such as large predators, whose presence can trigger cascading effects. Advocates point to the reintroduction of wolves in certain parks, where predation altered grazing behavior, allowing riverside vegetation to recover and stabilizing soil that had long been eroding. (C) Skeptics, however, warn that rewilding can provoke serious conflict with nearby communities, particularly when predators prey on livestock or restored habitats limit land for agriculture. Moreover, critics argue that restoring landscapes to an imagined pristine state is scientifically dubious, since ecosystems have long been shaped by human activity.

When a resource is shared among many users, none of whom bears the full cost of its depletion, each individual is tempted to extract as much value as possible before others do the same. (A) This dynamic, famously labeled the tragedy of the commons, describes how shared pastures and fisheries can be degraded even when every participant privately understands the danger of overuse. (B) A single herder who adds one more animal to a communal pasture gains the entire benefit of that addition, whereas the resulting damage to the grass is shared among other herders who depend on the land. Because self-interest offers no incentive to restrain consumption unilaterally, the resource tends to be exhausted long before any user intends such an outcome. (C) For decades, economists assumed that only two remedies existed: strict regulation or the conversion of shared resources into private property. Elinor Ostrom challenged this assumption, however, by documenting communities that had sustainably managed fisheries and forests for generations through locally devised rules and mutual monitoring rather than external control.

Erving Goffman extended this framework with his dramaturgical approach, comparing social life to a theatrical performance in which individuals manage impressions, present different faces in different settings, and carefully control what audiences see backstage versus onstage. Symbolic interactionism approaches society not as a fixed structure imposed from above but as something continuously constructed through everyday face-to-face interaction, in which individuals interpret and respond to the symbolic meanings that objects, actions, and other people hold for them. ( ① ) Sociologist George Herbert Mead argued that the self itself emerges through this interactive process, as individuals learn to see themselves from the perspective of others. ( ② ) He called this process the internalization of the generalized other, a composite sense of society's expectations. ( ③ ) Unlike structural theories that emphasize large institutions, symbolic interactionism focuses on the small, repeated exchanges through which shared meaning is negotiated. ( ④ ) Even stable social structures, in this view, ultimately depend on countless everyday interactions. ( ⑤ )